I am looking at making my first diesel purchase. I found a Crew Cab 2004 F250 Lariat Long Bed. It is 2WD which is what I prefer. The bed has a tonneau cover and never had a 5th wheel or a Gooseneck. Actually the under bumper hitch does not look like it has had a receiver slid in it many times. I am thinking this truck was more a daily driver than a tow vehicle. The paint, leather, and interior look good. Some wear but not excessive. It also has new Pirelli tires. The only issue is the cover for the garage door opener in the overhead console is missing. That's no big deal.

I am used to dealing with gasoline engines so buying a truck with 175K is causing some heartburn.

I pulled a CarFax and it shows 2 previous owners. It was originally a Texas truck from new until 113K in 2009, then the owner apparently moved to Alabama. The CarFax shows at 95K the EGR valve was replaced. At 101K the brakes were serviced and the coolant was flushed along with recommended maintenance. All this was done at a Houston Ford dealership.

The CarFax shows the 2nd owner bought the truck with 162K miles and kept it 18 days. I have no idea why it would have only been kept 18 days. That is a concern. A local dealer has the truck for sale now with just under 175K miles.

Can you guys tell me anything I need to really look at? What should make me run?

To start off ask the dealer to run an OASIS report on the truck. That will give you any warrantee work that was done on the truck by Ford. Have them hook the truck up to IDS and make them show you that the truck passes all the tests (injector buzz test, cylinder contribution test, etc.) finally it is a must to check the delta of the EOT and ECT of the truck to insure that the oil cooler is in good health. The truck must be cruising unloaded at 65mph and at full operating temp to do this. You will need some sort of gauge to do this unless Ford will be nice enough to let a tech do it for you (which I doubt they will do).

I STRONGLY recommend geting yourself a set of gauges anyway, preferably the Edge Insight CTS. It will pay for itself in a matter of time. If that is too expensive for you then the ScanGuageII is a cheaper option, or the DashBoos if you have an iOS device.

Here are some threads worth reading that should answer a lot of your basic questions:

Tell me if I'm wrong but he said the previous owner bought the truck with 162k miles and 18 days later he sold it to the car dealer and now it has 175k miles on it? I'm just wondering where 13k miles came from.

Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL while selling cummins but dreaming of powerstrokes!

Tell me if I'm wrong but he said the previous owner bought the truck with 162k miles and 18 days later he sold it to the car dealer and now it has 175k miles on it? I'm just wondering where 13k miles came from.

Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL while selling cummins but dreaming of powerstrokes!

That is what I was wondering. This is the last portion of the CarFax report. Maybe if someone that knows more about these reports reads it they will interpret it differently than I did.

The only way I can figure owning it for 18 days is maybe he knew a dealer that wanted one so he bought it for them knowing they'd buy it from him. Either that or he didn't like his truck

As for the miles I'd throw up a big ?

The dealer could not give me a satisfactory answer as to the additional miles during such a short time. I chose not to buy it. Instead I went to another dealer and got a 1 owner, according to CarFax, '08 cc 2WD XL with 136K miles.

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